


July

by LNJames



Series: Suddenly Everything Has Changed [4]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-02
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-05-01 01:54:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14509920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LNJames/pseuds/LNJames
Summary: How to save a life.Season 3 re-imagined. Canon-ish with liberty and justice for all.





	July

_I could taste the lightning on your breath._

Through an electron microscope, even the smallest things expanded, enlarged, became gigantic. Such a view opened up the world of the infinitely small and made it into something resembling a life, full of potential and elegant. The key, of course, was unlocking those secrets and transcribing, translating, transforming the results. As Lena Luthor scanned the output of her work scrolling across a translucent screen in the very far depths of L-Corp’s bio-marker lab south of the city, she wondered if this would be enough, if her efforts this time would yield fruit. She was on a race against time and losing precious data as each moment passed. Her fingers clicked across the keyboard before she reached up and pressed the electrode attached to her forehead, making sure it stuck, making sure everything she did could not be undone.

“Are you sure this is going to work, Lena?”

Alex Danvers stood hovering over her shoulder and normally, she would have bitten out a response to the doubt and to the interruption. Lena was sequencing the last few lines of code that spooled out from the processing rack next to her, stacked as it was in core after core of computing memory and speed and bandwidth the likes of which might put the DEO to shame. She checked the code against the infinitely small electron signatures and watched the tiny boron nitride drill bit go to work. It etched across an impossibly hard surface made of lonsdaleite, lustored gold and silver from its journey through space. Leave it to magic that a meteor brought the right combination of minerals and chemicals and dust from dead stars to Canyon Diablo. Leave it to L-Corp money to buy the rights to all such rare and elusive material. Leave it to Lena to find a way to make the numbers add up just right to preserve something so precious, so fragile, that only the hardest substance could hold it.

“No, but I want to believe it will.”

She didn’t mean for her voice to sound the way it did, tired and tinged with a speck of doubt, sixteen hours in the lab and counting. She didn’t mean for her private thoughts on the matter of immortality to intrude. And Lena certainly didn’t mean for her feelings to come out, especially not with Alex Danvers who was already so desperate that she had come to Lena in the first place, slipping from the DEO to here after a midnight text. Before all of this, Lena herself had fought, to no avail and with an almost murderous tone to her voice to be allowed into the DEO after Christmas turned red and ominous, when Kara was lost. Alex, the very same person who now stood wringing her hands in the depths of a black-site L-Corp lab, had that night enlisted her girlfriend to calm and contain a Luthor on the verge of violence. When Kara Zor-El fell from the sky for all to see and didn’t move, Alex waved Maggie Sawyer over from her patrol and pointed out Lena, her face full of shock and horror at the sight of Supergirl, broken. The DEO took over and all Lena could do was scream when a beloved superhero’s body was hastily removed. That night and into the next day was a blur of worry and pain and silence and it stoked every fear Lena Luthor had in one grand showdown until there was nothing left inside her but a hollowness. She had sat stone-faced in her own apartment, waiting, while Maggie tried her best until eventually they both formed a silent pact of misery. Lena packed that all away when Alex texted and here they were now.

“Don’t you?”

These last words she spoke in a whisper, her head turned back to Alex, and she knew her eyes were begging for the agent to say yes. Alex sighed and moved closer. The two were somewhat reluctant allies, the heart of Kara Danvers forcing a quiet alliance between the two of them. They sometimes butted heads, about technology, about the government, about private business, and mostly about risks real and imagined. The press had pressed, had dug, and had discovered sometime in October that there was indeed something between the L-Corp CEO and the CatCo reporter. According to Alex, that put Kara at risk, which put Supergirl at risk. According to Kara, that then logically put Lena at risk. So they were all three walking a tightrope after that. For most of the last few months, they had been at a truce, Alex and Lena and Kara working on how they all worked, together and separately. They spent dinners and game nights and other events together, holidays even, until one minute it was pretty dresses and smiles and a Christmas tree and the next it was a Worldkiller and darkness. Lena’s eyes must have shown what she was thinking because Alex put her hand on her shoulder.

“Of course I do, Lena. I know if anyone can figure out how to help Kara, it’s you. Querl Dox believes you have the key to setting Kara free.”

The computing unit kept spinning out numbers that added up to a life led and Lena put her hand to her forehead, holding it and the device attached to her skin as she closed her eyes. She needed to keep filling the code with sequences that mattered, she needed to keep translating brainwaves of memories into spirals of neutrinos that could be read like a book written on the skin and all the atoms and elements that made up a body that fell from the sky and lay suspended and unreachable. Lena needed to figure out a way to open the genie’s bottle and pull her superhero to the here and now by unfolding the past. With a deep breath, Lena flooded the computer with invisible numbers falling from her head, waving in arcs and sparking to life on an indestructible etched surface and spelling out a symphony only a chosen one could hear.

*

_The explosions in the sky, reds and blues and whites, rattled the city in carnival lightning and thunderous sonic booms. Lena watched the woman standing on the private patio balcony of her penthouse, deep red cape and blond hair flowing out behind her as the sky lit up. As she walked closer, she knew she was the only one who had seen the very slightest flinch, the almost invisible disturbance on the surface of a superhero. The side effects of being in love with Kara Zor-El was being able to see things no one else did, special things, things that the yellow sun did to the girl from Krypton that could be explained by science, but magic was the better word._

_“Hey…”_

_Lena spoke quietly as they both listened to the distinct sound of a mortar slicing upwards higher and higher into National City’s sky, the air pregnant in anticipation. She waited to put her hand on Kara until after the fireworks burst into sparkles of gold and covered them both in brief, brilliant light._

_“Hi..”_

_Lena joined Kara at the railing as they both looked out, high above the city on Lena’s penthouse deck. She had been surprised to find the superhero outside now when she had expected Kara Danvers to come over for the roman candle holiday, just the two of them tucked up on the roof of her apartment building to watch the light show. But she had gotten a hasty text about a criminal threat to the barges that staged the fireworks display and a ransom to be paid to the alien gang who had replaced the pyrotechnic devices with real explosives. So Lena had resigned herself to a glass of Gewurztraminer, cold enough to break the heat of an early July, and a good book and the little burn of worry whenever Supergirl took flight. When the fireworks started without a hitch, she had stepped outside, a simple black silk nightshirt, hair in a messy bun, and bare legs all she could bear in the humid night. She had not been surprised, really, to see Supergirl standing there, backlit by the skyline and vigilant and she had smiled until she saw what only her eyes could see._

_“How’s my super one doing? Okay?”_

_She looked at a strong profile softened by golden sparks and watched blue eyes look out over National City before Kara turned to her and smiled softly and nodded, before putting a hand over Lena’s on her arm. It was like touching electricity, always. The side effects of being in love with Kara, the little sparks from her hands jumping ship to sting against Lena, the warmth of her eyes heating already heated skin. Kara was lightning in a bottle, fleeting and arcing and orphic. It had always drawn Lena in, that irresistible pull towards the mystery and the magic of Kara Zor-El. They watched silently as the finale started, the sky cracking and exploding in a million lights of all colors followed by concussive booms that caused Kara to put her arm around Lena and pull her up against her side. She pressed in and slid a hand over a smooth suit-covered back as the crimson cape picked up the breeze and fluttered out behind them both in a wave._

_“I know these things are supposed to be celebrations.”_

_Kara quietly spoke as the last faded bits of fireworks fell harmlessly as the show was over. Lena let her fingers squeeze against an impossibly solid set of ribs before Kara continued._

_“But I can’t help but think about...how the sky looked..”_

_Kara had only told her fragments of a child’s memory of her planet’s last breaths. Lena didn’t know all of the stories, all of Kara, just yet. There was so much to learn and she let Kara tell her things whenever she was ready because if there was one thing Lena learned it was that Kara held on to her pain more closely, dearly, while she gave so much else out to the world so willingly._

_“I’m sorry...what can I do to help?”_

_At that, Kara smiled quietly at her and leaned down, finding her lips as if that were the answer and for a moment, in the dark now that the fire and fury was over, it was. Lena let herself go softer, opened herself to the kiss that turned deeper. There were many things she loved about Kara, many many things, but the way a superhero kissed was way up on the list. It was always tentative at first until the spark ignited and Lena responded in the way she had come to know would help, would collect the energy Kara had swirling and focus it. When Kara’s hands reached up to her face and held it, surprisingly tender always, she pressed in against a solid body and softened even more, gave permission, asked to unburden the one who held Earth on her shoulders. She was breathless when Kara pulled back, lips wet and eyes shining even in the darkness of an Independence night._

_“That’s a start..”_

_The smile that came was equal parts Supergirl, Kara Danvers, and Kara Zor-El, all rolled into one and Lena let her hands soothe against warm ribs held in place by a suit of blue and red. She could feel the golden chaos under Kara’s skin settle, the atoms calming down as if feathers smoothed and it was her favorite thing, to be able to do something, anything, that helped Kara exist in the world a little easier. July had brought with it relative calm, but there was always an edge, always a threat, always that thing in the back of Lena’s mind that reminded her that everything was fleeting in the end, even the woman standing tall in front of her. One day, everything would transform, dissolve, reconstitute elsewhere. Maybe it would be sudden or maybe it would unravel slowly, but Lena was no fool: There would be an end. How could she bottle this exact memory, these feelings, the existence of who she and Kara were to each other and shoot it far enough into space that it wouldn’t be dependent upon the Earth to survive? Could a memory be immortal, forever, energy transformed but never destroyed? When she felt warmth along her neck and further down between the buttons of her silk shirt, she smiled and looked up. The side effect of being in love with Kara Zor-El was unforgettable._

_“See something you like?”_

_She watched as Kara’s eyes traveled over her and took her in, the threats gone and the reminders of lost worlds forgotten. If she was nothing else, Lena could be someone that could hold Kara’s attention, be salvation and a promise of something solid and real. Kara’s hands went from her face down along her neck, tracing against her heated skin until a fingertip sparked along her breastbone and the warm skin between the buttons of her silk shirt. Sometimes, what Kara did, literally took her breath away and she held the one she had left as eyes that had seen too much were now focused squarely on her._

_“I love everything I see, Lena...you know this..”_

_She chuckled as Kara glanced up at her with a rakish smirk that was all Supergirl._

_“I do. Would you like to see more?”_

_If Lena was nothing else, she could be someone who held all of what Kara would allow and kept it safe. These were the things she could do in the here and now, be a part of memories that Kara made here on Earth and that kept her steady when the world around them exploded in celebration or in disintegration. Lena reached up and took Kara’s hands, the same ones that saved the day or wrote the story or reached for her, and put them against her nightshirt, knowing that the buttons keeping it closed would soon be history. She looked up at Kara and smiled softly, with her whole heart or whatever parts were not already fully Kara’s. Lena felt Kara pull her back away from the edge of the patio, away from any eyes upturned to the heights they existed and up against the wall on a steamy July night that would burn into her memory._

*

The numbers kept coming, the hardest surface found on earth was scratched with a code that recorded the way Lena remembered. She wasn’t sure this would work, actually had no proof or theory to explain why it might. All she knew was that Kara was somewhere far, far from here, locked away and imprisoned. Lena worked hard not to let herself remember The Fall, the way Kara’s body floated bonelessly down to earth, cape fluttering, arms outstretched, and the roaring of the air like a river as the descent was both endless and over in an instant. Lena worked hard to not let her brainwaves translate the feeling she had when she watched when it all came down in an instant, when her heart was harrowed and left broken in the ruins of a street not strong enough to resist the weight of a girl who fell from the stars. She could only hope that what she was doing contained enough magic to fix a broken spell and enough science to make it stick. She would pour out the memories they made and hope it would be enough. They were running out of time and the Worldkiller was on the loose and Lena wasn't ready to lose her world just yet.

Lena would set Kara Zor-El free or die trying.


End file.
